these treasures are the chiefest, and he that knows the Art, and the expressions, and hath

the medium, will be richer than any other (16). But, in its natural state, the microcosmic life is not dissimilar from the vitality of the greater world, which is included by respiration in the blood of all creatures, maintaining its perpetual pulsation, as of the wind and waves, their flux and reflux; supplying to all existence the food of life. And how much such a life is in need of melioration, how much it suffers and desires, and how far its beneficience falls short of human hope and capability, may be apparent, and that in her Door-keeper, Isis is not revealed. But so far we have yet advanced only to the gate of the great Labyrinth, where the Sphinx is even now present, rapidly propounding her dark riddles in the world, images of the obscure and intricate nature of the human spirit; which, by the devious windings, delusive attractions and similitudes of its own included sphere, leads imperceptibly, as it were, by an alluring grace, into that Hermetic wilderness and wild of Magic in which so many adventurers have gone astray. This is the Monster and the Eternal Riddle explained to common sense as suits it, but misunderstood to this day; that Compound Simple and ground of the magians elements --- a thing so perplexedly treated of by them, and having about it such a latitude for sophistication, that it is almost impossible to collect or unravel what has been said of it. Or how should reason attempt to define an essence all comprehending, yet separated in each particular, by so great an interval from itself? But this is that Augean Stable that was to be cleansed, that most famous labor of the philosophic Hercules; nor the least of labors, to turn the current of life into another channel, and purify the natural source. Close upon the revealment of the Medial Life then, as we take it, in order of the Mysteries followed the Purificative Rites, which were designed also to restore the monarchy of reason in the soul, and this not either as an end so much, but as preparatory to undergoing the final initiations. We are induced, however, to dwell longer on this first step, and on the necessity of intellectual preparation and auxiliaries; because it may be objected, as we proceed to unfold the ultimate tradition of this Wisdom, that we have no valid witness to our side; that any individual may declare according to the revelations of his mind, and introduce a various imagination to the idea of truth; that even supposing the mind included for a while and entirely free from outward impressions, still, retaining as it must the original bias, not only of sense but of birth and education, its experience will be neither trustworthy nor important to this life: and then nothing of a universal character, such as the ancients speak of, has been observed; or if asserted, how should it be scarcely proven? Reason in these days is not content with affirmation; it will have objective response to its faith; all pretensions, therefore, to internal lights and revelations have ceased to attract the attention of mankind. And again, it may be inquired why, if true Being is everywhere totally present, it is not so perceived; and why all things partaking do not enjoy the light of the so-called superstantial world? In reply to this last objection, we would ask if it be not because that very light is drawn outwardly, and enchanted by sense that it is internally unconscious and oblivious everywhere of the great Identity whence it springs? If that were applied inwardly which now looks out, and every natural impediment removed, experience might then reveal to us the antecedent life. But the former objections recur here: there are impediments; and it behooves us to consider scrupulously, but without prejudice, the possibility and tests of such an experience; for if by this traditionary fall and outbirth, the understanding is so polluted as to be no more able, as Lord Bacon supposes (17), to reflect the total reason to itself, introspection will be useless, and the central mystery remains, as respects humanity, a hopeless problem after all. None better than the ancients (who profess to have enjoyed the rational life in its most intimate spheres, and to have reaped its most real and lasting advantages), describe the folly and fatal allurements to which they are subjected who trust themselves to remain passively dreaming in the region of the phantasy, with its notions and instincts, often more false, fleeting, and evil that the corporeal images with which sense is conversant. It is for this cause they insist so much that, before any one betakes himself to the inner life of contemplation --- before he hopes, we mean, to pass into its Reason --- that all else be effectually obliterated, and the mental atmosphere made clear and passive